Casiotone

Casiotone CT-380 Keyboard

Casiotone was a series of home electronic keyboards made by Casio in the early 1980s. Casio promoted the Casiotone 201 (CT-201) as "the first electronic keyboard with full-size keys that anyone could afford".^[1] The name "Casiotone" disappeared from Casio's keyboard catalog when more accurate synthesis technologies became prevalent, but the brand was reused for new models launched in 2019.

The first Casiotone keyboards used a sound synthesis technique known as vowel-consonant synthesis to approximate the sounds of other instruments (albeit not very accurately). Most Casiotone keyboards were small, with miniature keys designed for children's fingers, and were not intended for use by professional musicians; they usually contained a rhythm generator, with several user-selectable rhythm patterns, and often the means to automatically play accompaniments.

pre-Casiotone

VL-Tone VL-1 (1981)^[2][3]

Casiotone

Casiotone 201 (1980, 1st Casiotone)

Casiotone 401 (1981, 1st Casiotone with polyphonic auto accompaniment)

Casiotone 1000P (1982, semi-programmable synthesizer with arpeggiator)

Casiotone 501 (1983, successor to CT-401)

Casiotone MT-60 (identical case design with later MT-45)

post-Casiotone

Casio CZ-101 (1984, phase distortion synthesis)

Sampletone SK-1 (1985, sampler)